Compte rendu ‒ Conseil des ADPIC ‒ Afficher les détails de l'intervention/la déclaration

Mr. S. Harbinson (Hong Kong)
Chairperson
E Arrangements for cooperation with WIPO
20. The Chairman drew attention to document IP/C/W/17, which contained the draft agreement on cooperation with WIPO that he had drawn up in consultation with the representative of WIPO, Ambassador Loizaga of Paraguay, Chairman of the WIPO Coordination Committee. Both he and Ambassador Loizaga had been assisted by the respective secretariats. The text contained in the document was the result of intensive consultations which had been concluded on 17 November. He underlined the cooperative and helpful spirit in which the consultations had been undertaken. There had been a number of points where the initial positions of the two parties had been different, but both sides had made significant efforts to compromise to close the gap and to find language that would be acceptable. Both sides had taken the view that the agreement should be limited to what was necessary for the purposes of cooperation between the two Organizations. On the WTO side, the fact that WIPO had already gone far in responding to the suggestions of the TRIPS Council when its Governing Bodies had taken a decision on cooperation with the WTO in early October (IP/C/W/14) had been taken into account. 21. Continuing, the Chairman said that each Organization would need to take certain autonomous decisions in response to the agreement. The International Bureau of WIPO had informed him that it would propose to the Assemblies of the Paris and Berne Unions decisions recognizing that requirements under the Paris and Berne Conventions to communicate national laws to the International Bureau could be fulfilled by communication of such laws through the WTO Secretariat. To accompany Article 3 of the draft agreement, concerning the implementation of Article 6ter of the Paris Convention for the purposes of the TRIPS Agreement, he presented to the Council a draft decision of the Council for TRIPS (subsequently distributed as document IP/C/W/18), which would recognize that the communication of emblems and of objections thereto among WTO Members, through the International Bureau, would be considered as communications for the purposes of the TRIPS Agreement; that the existing stock of emblems communicated among WTO Members under the Paris Convention would also be considered communications under the TRIPS Agreement; and that the period of 12 months for objections would start on the date of application of Article 2 of the TRIPS Agreement for the objecting country where either the communicating WTO Member or the objecting WTO Member was not a Member of the Paris Convention. In relation to paragraph 3 of Article 3 of the draft agreement, which concerned the provision of information to the WTO Secretariat about communications of emblems, the International Bureau had informed him that it would propose to the Paris Union Assembly that it abandon its present practice by which it treats as confidential any objection lodged against an emblem. 22. Recognizing that delegations needed time to study the text that had only just been put before them, the Chairman said that it was not his intention to seek endorsement of it at this meeting. The Council would have to meet again before the end of the year for the purpose of endorsing the agreement and also to adopt a decision regarding Article 6ter of the Paris Convention. Since the proposed agreement was one between two organizations, he believed that the text should also be submitted to the General Council, at its meeting of 13-14 December 1995, for its approval, before being signed.
IP/C/M/4